


You find him, Morse.

by Lydia_E_Nheers



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Child Death, Child Death Mention, Gen, Hint of an unrequited crush, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Minor Character Death, Missing Scene, Or maybe it's requited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 18:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7449274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lydia_E_Nheers/pseuds/Lydia_E_Nheers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max seems more affected than usual at Maude's death in Nocturne. The death of a child is never easy. He asks Morse to catch the man who did it. Morse tells him in person.</p>
<p>Post Nocturne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You find him, Morse.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know much about the hiring procedures for medical examiners in the UK. So we'll go with it.
> 
> Not beta'd or Britpicked. Hope you enjoy!

"You find this piece of work, Morse. You find whoever did.." Max felt a very curious sudden burning sensation in his throat. "..that. All right? For me? You find him." Max turned and walked away, leaving Morse alone once again on the gravel drive in front of the bleakest girl's school DeBryn had ever seen.

The murdered girl in question was young. Not even a teenager. Far too young to be on a stretcher with a sheet over her face. He knew at the very least that despite her ungentle death, she'd be handled with care in his mortuary. That was very small consolation indeed, but he allowed himself to momentarily indulge himself in it.

Max scrubbed a hand over his face. Most days, he enjoyed his job. It was quiet, paid well. He worked with the police to speak for the dead and help gain justice for them. Those were good days. But some days. Some days it was difficult. Kiddies. Young mums. He sighed and went to his car.

He had never married. "Not the marrying kind" was the phrase used most often now. He didn't have a lover either. Or a "particular friend" as it was called, despite the small but growing spot in his heart for a certain russet haired detective constable.

But he did have a sister. To whom and her husband, he was close. He suspected his sister knew about his predilections. But if she did, she never said anything, for which he was grateful. They invited him round for tea more often than not, and was so tonight.

But the thought of dinner with anyone tonight was enough to make him want to weep. So from his small office just off the mortuary, he called and cancelled. Long day at the office was the excuse he gave. If his voice was weary or shaky, his sister didn't say anything, bless her. She merely gently chided him for working too hard, promised to bring him some of her homemade stew the following morning for his lunch, said she loved him, and rang off.

He went home that evening, silent in his car the whole way, despite the radio being turned up loud, Beethoven not quite loud enough to drown out the image of a little girl with blood on her face. The trail of blood upstairs, leading to her poor body on the floor below, where she was thrown like a unloved rag doll.

The post mortem had taken almost no time. Cause of death was obvious. It was exactly as he told Morse. A mortal cut to the throat, followed by a grievous blow to the head. Straightforward really. Usually, he was happy for these types of autopsies. They meant going home early. But today was different. This girl had no business being on his table.

Max would be the first to admit that he basically lucked into his position. He was talented and had received very high marks at university. But, he was very fresh out of uni when the resident pathologist at his current hospital had died suddenly, leaving them one pathologist short. He had applied on a whim, knowing it was unlikely for him to get the job, given he was so inexperienced. But when one of his former professors and his wife played a particularly long game of bridge with a member of the hiring board and his own wife, a good word was put in, and Maxwell DeBryn was hired before the week was through. However, he liked to believe that he thorougly earned his position as time went on. 

He had known that being a medical examiner meant helping the police in murder enquiries. He thought he _understood_ fully what that meant. As he soon realized; he didn't have a bloody clue.

The first murder victim to come to his purview happened four months after his appointment. Up until then, it had all been people dying of an unexpected heart attack, or an accident. There had been a couple of drownings, a few suicides and one memorable occasion, a dog attack. But this. This was different.

She was a child. More specifically, a six year old girl. With ringlet blonde curls. She had been...interfered with. And she had died by blunt force trauma to the head. He had concluded later, with a cricket bat. Found by a neighbour in a field behind her house. Dumped under a tree. She had been dead forty eight hours.

Max went out and brought her back with him. He treated her as gently and lovingly as he could. He spoke to her. Apologised to her. Apologised for every sordid thing she experienced in her last two days on earth. He vomited into the sink when he finished. He was twenty three years old when he met this girl. He felt about eighty three when he finished the examination.

Her name was Judith. Judith Gillespie. He never forgot that. He had found out first from the police, then the subsequent newspaper headlines that it was her own father that had done it. He had given evidence on the first day of the trial, then attended the court proceedings every day for over a month before the jury found him guilty. Then Max attended the sentencing hearing. Life. Ten years and dozens of murder enquiries later and Max still remembered this little girl's face.

It was her face he thought of now, driving home. Reflected in the unseeing eyes of Maude Ashendon. He blinked fiercely and turned the radio up louder.

His house was a small one, despite being well paid. But it was cosy enough for one. He liked his little home. It was a refuge, and tonight was no exception. He went inside and took the longest shower of his life.

Max was very familiar with the smells of his work. The tang of blood, the earthy smell of fecal matter, the overall organic reek of decomposing flesh, the almost chemically smell of bile and stomach content. By now, he was fairly desensitized to it all. But tonight. Oh tonight, the smell of blood was upon him, and only an hour of scrubbing was enough to wash it away, down the drain amongst the white swirls of shampoo and soap.

He didn't eat dinner that evening. He hadn't been lying to his sister when he said he wasn't hungry earlier. Instead, he poured himself a very generous glass of brandy before going into his sitting room with a book of poetry and built up a good fire in the grate. His favourite armchair facing the fireplace was warm and slightly sunk in as he relaxed into it and began to read. He had no use for television, so one was absent from the room. Soon, the merry sound of the fire crackling and pages slowly turning filled the room as Max slowly forgot the smell of blood for a while.

It was half two in the morning when his doorbell rang, startling him from a sleep he didn't know he had fallen into. His book had fallen from his hand to the floor. He picked it up and put it on the side table as the doorbell rang again.

Max stood up and tightened his dressing gown around himself before going to the door. Morse was standing on the other side, fidgeting, looking down and shuffling his feet in that perpetually nervous way he did. He reckoned he hadn't seen the detective constable standing still for more than a few moments at a time before. Little pieces of him always seemed to be in motion. A restless body to match a restless mind. 

"Morse?" Max opened the door fully. "What are you doing here?" He looked tired and disheveled, wearing the same clothes he saw him in earlier. Which meant he had been wearing them for forty hours now. His thick, rust coloured hair was in waves, sticking up every which way, suggesting he had been running his fingers through it.

"Your light was on." Morse said in way of a greeting, still looking at the ground. "I got your address from the desk at the hospital."

DeBryn stood to the side, silently inviting him to come inside. It had gotten cold. The wind was biting, and Morse's coat looked thin. Morse took the invitation and Max closed the door behind him.

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Erm. No. Thank you, I'm not staying." He fidgeted and ran his fingers through his hair, then cleared his throat. Max's eyes followed the motion, before he realized where he was looking and immediately looked at a point on the wall behind Morse's shoulder.

"I just wanted to say. We got him."

Max blinked and looked at him. "You did? I knew you would." He paused, his stomach clenching slightly. "Who?"

"A man called Black. Terrence Black." Morse explained everything, from the Victorian murders to the inheritance, right up to the events of that night. To Black falling through the floor to his instant death.

A deep, dark part of Max's heart was gladdened to hear it. And he mentally recoiled from the thought. Something must've shown on his face, however, because Morse's eyebrows quirked up at him and then his eyes softened.

"Maybe I'll have that cup of tea after all?" Morse asked with nervous, half smile.

Max smiled back, knowing he'd been found out.  "Hang your coat up." He nudged his chin at the coat wrack by the door, then pointed down the hall. "The kitchen's through there."

Morse did as he was told and made his way to the kitchen, Max followed and put the kettle on.

His kitchen was small, but clean and the round table was well scrubbed. It was certainly much nicer and well stocked than Morse's tiny one. Morse sat down and after a few moments, Max put a cup down on a saucer. "Milk? Sugar?"

"Milk please."

Max added milk to his and then to his own tea and sat across from him. "I appreciate you coming here to tell me in person." He said after a moment of quiet.

"Yeah well. You seemed so." He gestured fruitlessly with his seemingly tireless hands, visibly choosing his next words with great care. "Did you...know the girl? Maude Ashendon?"

"No." He took a sip of tea. "I didn't." Max swallowed and held his mug in his hands. "Children." He looked into his tea.

Morse made an understanding sort of noise. "Children are never easy to see in our line of work."

"When I was freshly minted as a medical examiner, my first murder was a child." Max said slowly, not looking at Morse, but at his own hands. He took a fortifying sip of tea before he started again. "I was twenty three. She was six. Raped and murdered by her own father. He left her body in a field. Make it look like a kidnapping and dumping."

Morse inhaled sharply. "Jesus." He exhaled. "I'm sorry. Was-was he sentenced?"

"Life." He spat out. "He got life in prison. More than that man deserves" he paused and looked up at the constable's tired, haggard face. "Her name was Judith Gillespie." His voice trembled slightly, and he cleared his throat, and removed his glasses.

"I never forgot her, Morse. I never forgot how she looked, so tiny on my table. An innocent girl, life snuffed out like that" he shook his head sadly and finished his tea. "What animals we truly are."

"'Man is the cruellest animal.'" Morse replied, patted his arm, and finished his own tea.

Max smiled very slightly. The brief contact itself was a comfort. "I never went in much for Nietzsche. But the sentiment fits tonight."

Morse stood. "I should get going home. I need to get at least some sleep tonight." He thought for a moment before absentmindedly running a hand through his hair again. "Probably won't though."

DeBryn stood with him, and together they walked to the door. "You will, Morse." Max touched him on the shoulder after he had put on his coat, and looked him in the eye, realizing just how startling blue his eyes really were when their full attention was on his. "Thank you again. I knew. I knew you'd get him"

"Well." He hesitated. "You...asked." He cleared his throat. "Thank you, doctor"

"Max, please." He blurted out and then felt his cheeks flushing. 

Morse tipped him a tiny, half smile and opened the door. "Goodnight, Max"

"G'night, Morse"

He watched Morse enter the borrowed Jaguar and drive away before he went through to the sitting room and put his book away. Then he gathered the brandy glass and washed it in the kitchen with the teacups. He then went up to bed and under the covers, he whispered a thank you to a deity he didn't really believe in and fell asleep.


End file.
